“It means I trusted the wrong man, and he brought harm to the order.” Arthur shakes his head and laughs bitterly. “Sorry, that’s so vague. He used me to get into the temple, and he stole a relic. He killed a priest while he was escaping. I was deemed involved but not responsible, so I was sentenced to a year of penance before my final trial.”
“Does penance mean you have to say yes when random necromancers want to hire you?”
“I can do almost anything besides set foot in a church,” he says, and there’s that barely-hidden hurt again. Arthur clearly isn’t as used to masking his feelings as Shae is.
Shae isn’t sure how to feel. Killed a priest? Penance? The words seem strange under the bright sunlight, coming from Arthur’s handsome face. Shae can’t fathom sharing his own hurts so openly. “You didn’t have to tell me that.”
Arthur shrugs. “Wouldn’t be much penance if I kept it a secret.” He cocks his head, some of the darkness fading from his eyes. “You don’t seem bothered by it, though.”
It’s Shae’s turn to shrug. “I guess I’ve seen worse.”
“I bet you have.” Arthur takes a swig from his water flask. “Fair’s fair. How long have you been a necromancer?”
Shae is distracted by the way Arthur’s head tips back, stretching out the line of his neck. The way a bead of sweat gleams down his throat. He’s so distracted that when he hears Arthur’s question, he answers truthfully.
“Ten years.”
When Arthur’s brow furrows, Shae realizes his mistake. The man isn’t stupid, and the math is easy. Sure enough, Arthur’s next question gets to the heart of the matter.
“Wait, how old are you?”
Images flash before Shae’s eyes. Dirt under his nails. Scattered bones. Blood seeping from the cracks of his skin to the cracks of the earth. His only connection to those he called. His breath frosts the air as the cold comes for him.
He shakes himself. The cold never leaves, but the day is bright and the road ahead is long. He tosses his apple core beneath the tree. “None of your business,” he snaps. “Let’s go.” He strides back to the road without waiting for Arthur and Duchess to get moving.
Arthur might be thrilled to share his own dark past, but Shae feels no obligation to return the favor. His penance still hurts plenty when he keeps it secret. He doesn’t need to tell the truth. He just needs to undo his mistake, and forget all of this ever happened.
***
They don’t talk much the rest of the day, which is fine by Shae. He can tell Arthur’s going a bit stir-crazy from the quiet, though, by the way his conversations with Duchess get more and more frequent as the day wears on.
They set up camp by a river, which Arthur tells Duchess is a small branch of the Rising Run. Shae recognizes the name from his map, and glances along the rippling current. The Rising Run begins in the Riseniasha Mountains and carries through the heart of Lyrisenia, then through Charain until it pours into the ocean. These very drops of water have passed through Izen’s domain. They’ve seen Shae’s destination.
“I’m going to bathe,” Arthur says after getting a fire started. “I’ll be right over there.”
Shae nods and sits down by the fire. The river’s easily visible from their campsite, only a few thin trees between him and the waterline, but he appreciates the heads-up, compared to the unexpected vanishing he woke up to this morning. He’s barely explained anything—he knows he’s being a tightlipped asshole about it—but Arthur’s still listening and adapting to what he says.
The paladin’s probably the nicest bodyguard Shae’s ever hired. The worst part is, that won’t matter. He’ll still leave in the end. Everyone does.
Enough moping.Shae scoots a little closer to the fire, until he’s nearly singeing his toes in a bid for warmth, and glances out towards the river.
He sees an expanse of gleaming golden skin, and hurriedly looks away.
Then looks again.
He’s only human, after all, and Arthur’s broad, bare back is glorious. Even from this distance, Shae’s entranced by the way the muscles move over his shoulders, the way his broad shoulders narrow to his waist. The slight difference in skin tone at the boundary between waist and—
Shae can’t remember the last time he saw another man’s bare ass, but he’s very sure he’s never seen one as fine as Arthur’s. His own body flushes with a heat that has nothing to do with the fire, and he turns his head sharply away before Arthur turns around and notices his inappropriate leering.
We’re both men, we’re traveling together, this is normal, right?
He sneaks one more glance just in time to see Arthur wading into the running water, and he leaps away from the fire to the opposite side of camp. Visions of wet, golden skin rush through his mind anyway. He rubs his gloved palms over his eyes, trying to chase them away. “No, no, no,” he hisses to himself. “Bad Shae.”
He can’t imagine a righteous Varan would react kindly to a necromancer leering at him like that. Working together is one thing. Shae’s inappropriate fantasies are quite another.
Not that he would know how to act on them, even if he wasn’t scared of chasing Arthur away. He’s had neither the will nor the opportunity to pursue any sort of friendship, much less a lover. The only people interested in him have been people like that Riverswords mercenary back in Andell. The type who’ll go for anyone, as long as they’re too weak and alone to fight back.
A low nickering cuts through his confused arousal. Shae turns to Duchess, tethered on the edge of camp. She’s completely untacked—the first thing Arthur had done when they stopped for the night—save her halter, and while she’s been spending the evening trimming the grass around her, now she stares at Shae with her ears pricked forward.
